Academic misconduct in the final year project! In previous years a number of final year students were refused degrees and left the University with a lesser.

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Presentation on theme: "Academic misconduct in the final year project! In previous years a number of final year students were refused degrees and left the University with a lesser."— Presentation transcript:

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academic misconduct in the final year project! In previous years a number of final year students were refused degrees and left the University with a lesser award after it was concluded that they had cheated in their final year project. Fintan Culwin 2011 version

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meet with your project tutor regularly and have your logbook signed. meet with your 2nd supervisor when required and have your logbook signed. complete the on-line progress forms when required, giving clear notes about your work. clearly identify any non-original material you include in the body of your report. limit the amount of non-original material in the body of the report. extensive use of non-original material if needed should be in an appendix. all projects will be subject to automated investigation. if in doubt consult with your project tutor, 2nd supervisor, Dave Inman or Fintan Culwin. if you do not have a record of the development of your project it will be failed!!

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In the research aspects it is appropriate to include extracts from other people's work. These extracts should be relatively brief, more factual that argumental, included in quotation marks or indented in some way to make them distinct and the exact source of the material clearly stated. (It is not really appropriate to put a figure on this. However, if 10% of a chapter were cited material you should not be worried but if 20% were you should be!) In the event of an academic misconduct investigation this paragraph will be shown to you and you will be asked again if you understand it!

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You will be allowed access to the Turnitin system before you submit your final report in order that you can reassure yourself that you have not committed ‘accidental plagiarism’.

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!!!!!WARNING!!!!! Turnitin can only show you where it has found non- original content. This does not mean that any content not shown as non-original is acceptable. Students have had some content not shown as non- original when they used Turnitin. This content has later been shown as non-original by Turnitin & other tools. This is not an acceptable reason to appeal a decision of academic misconduct. !!!!!WARNING!!!!!

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“The overall conclusion from this study is that, despite problems in interpreting the data from successive cohorts, the adoption of a proactive academic misconduct policy by a department can result in a quantitative reduction in plagiarism. Moreover, the policy can also be shown to make a change in the behavioural attitudes of students as evidenced by their increased use of referencing, suggesting that they have been more effectively acculturalised into academic culture and values, and hence they have been better educated.” Fintan Culwin, A Longitudinal Study of Nonoriginal Content in Final-Year Computing Undergraduate Projects IEEE Trans Ed, 51(2) pp189-94, 2008 Learning Services run regular courses on exactly how to reference

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!!!!!WARNING!!!!! If you write something (sentence, paragraph, essay) for one assignment and want to reuse it in a different assignment (including your project) you must treat it as non-original material. That means that it must be included in quotation marks and the exact source indicated. (e.g. A Student, Assignment 2 submission for CSD-M-XYZ, Dec2010.) The reason for this is that you have already gained academic credit for that work and cannot have more credit for it. Self Plagiarism

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When does disguise become paraphrase? The cat sat on the mat. contraction : Cat sat mat. expansion : separation : rearrangement : distraction: weird : affectation : The black cat sat on the red mat. The cat who had... sat... on the mat. On the mat sat the cat. The dog lay on the rug. The frog croaked on the lily pad. The feline domestic animal reclined upon the throwable floor covering. original :

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Learn how to reference (library services) Reference every use of non-original material. Keep accurate records of references. Share ideas, but not drafts of assignments. Rewrite rather than paraphrase. Plan your time carefully. Keep your work secure. If in doubt – ask your tutor! If still in doubt - ask your course director! If still in doubt - ask me! Maintain Integrity by...

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It is possible by chance alone?

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It is possible by chance alone. “it” is reported by Google to appear in about 850,000,000 documents. “it is” in about 265,000,000 documents. “it is possible” in about 72,000,000 documents. “it is possible by” in about 235,000 documents. “it is possible by chance” in about 142,000 documents. “it is possible by chance alone” in 3 documents. Searches for ‘a’ and ‘the’ give about 25,000,000,000 documents. Therefore the chance of any document containing the sentence is 1 in 8,000,000,000.Or a probability of Hence the probability of the phrase occurring twice in a corpus of student submissions?

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Borrowing or stealing & possibly disguising someone else’s work is wrong! Paying someone to do your work for you is wrong! Copying & pasting & possibly disguising from the Web is wrong! Working as a group when you have been asked to work as an individual is wrong! Not contributing to a groupwork, but gaining some marks from it is wrong! Assisting anyone in any way to do wrong, is wrong! Doing anything else not mentioned here that is wrong, is wrong! Catch 22 (Joseph Heller 1961)

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If you are tempted to cheat – in any unit: You've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? (Dirty Harry, Warner, 1971) There is a good chance that you will get caught! When caught, you could lose your award (and have no valid grounds to appeal against this decision)!!

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Wanted Java Programmer For a final year project supervised by Fintan. Reverse engineering, refactoring, documenting & improving some hacked together programs. Area of concern is textual analysis (plagiarism).